Dell Inspiron 1564: Mobile i3/i5 for the Masses
by Dustin Sklavos on March 3, 2010 11:01 PM EST- Posted in
- Laptops
Dell Inspiron 15 3DMark Performance
The chip that powers the Inspiron 15's ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4330—the M92, the desktop RV710's mobile derivative—remains extremely common as a dedicated option in modern laptops, routinely appearing as the higher-clocked Mobility Radeon HD 4570. While it sports an anemic 80 stream processors, that's still twice the number found in AMD's top-end integrated graphics part, the Radeon HD 4200. The HD 4330 also benefits from a dedicated 512MB of GDDR3 in the Inspiron 15 clocked at an effective 1.2GHz. While most gamers would scoff at such an underpowered GPU, we only need enough power to game at the Inspiron 15's modest 1366x768 resolution.
We've got a second point of comparison with the HD 4330 just to make things interesting. The MSI X610 uses a single-core AMD Athlon Neo MV-40 running at 1.6GHz. Obviously, that's a much slower CPU than the i5-520M, but it will be interesting to see whether the bottleneck is the CPU or GPU in our 3D and gaming results.
It isn't ideal, but in 3DMark the Mobility Radeon HD 4330 at least puts in a decent showing against NVIDIA's competing lowest-common-denominator, the GeForce G 210M powered by 16 of NVIDIA's CUDA cores—though granted the G210M is handicapped somewhat by the slower SU7300 @ 1.73GHz CPU. The CPU also makes a huge difference when we compare the MSI X610 and the Inspiron 15, with each succeeding 3DMark version showing a larger gap. We'll see how things stack up in our gaming results next.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
37 Comments
View All Comments
fett327 - Thursday, March 4, 2010 - link
I am assuming that since these are the new H55 based chipsets, hopefully the HDMI port will be about to output a 5.1 track? Or possibly also a DTS-HD or TrueHd track that comes off a bluray?It would be a shame if the HDMI ould output stereo. Can anyone confirm or deny?
warezme - Thursday, March 4, 2010 - link
I wouldn't buy any of these if I were serious about decent gaming. How sad.PyroHoltz - Thursday, March 4, 2010 - link
Where are all the Ultra Mobiles built on the arrandale chips?JarredWalton - Thursday, March 4, 2010 - link
Rumor is that Arrandale ULV has experienced delays and will show up some time in the next ~3 months.cjcoats - Thursday, March 4, 2010 - link
I recently had that experience buying a 2-socket Nehalem workstation from Dell. We're even having to do hardware installation for ourselves ("We'll sell you a SSD but we won't install it"). It was so bad that if it had been up to me instead of the bean-counters, I'd have said "to H--- with this" and purchased from a different vendor (at least two of which were quite willing to deliver exactly the requested configuration).FWIW
crydee - Thursday, March 4, 2010 - link
I've been following laptop progression for awhile now. I'm picking out a new one in summer for Grad school. Every article I read I still want whatever Asus UL will be out around then. These Dell's just don't stack up and for the $ when Asus offers free accidental coverage for a year as well.therealnickdanger - Thursday, March 4, 2010 - link
I know I've said this before and perhaps others have as well, but it would be nice if AT could add a "classic" gaming suite to its benchmarks. If a 'puter can muster over 60fps in games like FC2, obviously it can run older games just fine, but once you enter this mainstream and lower-end market, gaming performance is suspect.We're looking at this laptop that does 20-89fps, depending on the game. IMO, the biggest reason to use a gaming laptop is for LAN parties and mobile multiplayer: WoW, CS:S, UT3, L4D, Halo. If I'm in the minority and my request is unreasonable, so be it, but I believe there is a large gap in AT's gaming benchmarks when it comes to mid-to-low systems. I don't care how well the Core i3 IGP plays Crysis at 1080p, but its performance in the above games at 720p would interest many people.
We can assume a lot, but concrete numbers are nice to have.
LtGoonRush - Thursday, March 4, 2010 - link
Another laptop that continues the trend of taking a decent platform and pairing it with a dedicated GPU too slow to be useful. Have the major OEMs lost all ability to build a balanced system? For comparison, the Acer Aspire AS5740G-6979 for $799 at Newegg has a slightly lower-clocked CPU, larger HDD, and a Mobility Radeon HD 5650 1GB.strikeback03 - Thursday, March 4, 2010 - link
I hate everyone trying for a "balanced system", it means pretty much everything with a fast CPU has a GPU that I don't need.JarredWalton - Thursday, March 4, 2010 - link
Or there's the http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/671930-REG/A...">ASUS N61J for ~$1050 with 5730 and an i7-720QM... though battery life is going to suck on that, I'd wager. The Inspiron 15 is decent as a lower cost model, but the i5-520M is overpowered for what you get.